Closed Bug 527861 Opened 15 years ago Closed 6 years ago

Have extension compatibility controlled on a per-extension basis

Categories

(Toolkit :: Add-ons Manager, enhancement)

enhancement
Not set
normal

Tracking

()

RESOLVED INACTIVE

People

(Reporter: sparky, Unassigned)

References

Details

(Whiteboard: [AddonsRewrite])

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux x86_64; en-US; rv:1.9.3a1pre) Gecko/20091110 Minefield/3.7a1pre Firefox/3.7
Build Identifier: 

Reading through bug 521905 got me thinking about a potentially better solution.

But, going back to the root cause (incompatible extensions), I suspect that most users only need it for a few select extensions. So it seems like overkill to globally disable compatiblity checking. So perhaps a better solution (albeit more complex) would be to apply compatibility checking on a per-extension basis.

As I envision it, there should be a preference that would allow the user to override compatibility (extensions.allowCompatibilityOverride).

When this is set to true, the user would be given the option to force an extension to be installed (instead of just popping up a failure message) and given the ability to forcefully enable an extension (in the add-on manager).

Later, when a compatible version of an extension is installed, the extension's compatibility override could be automatically removed.

The only think I'm not sure how to handle would be on major version changes. But I see two potential avenues;
- Keep the current behavior of disabling all incompatible extensions, and display a message about re-enabling them in the add-on manager
- allow users to select extensions to override in the notification dialog on restart (similar to how session restore on crash works)

I think this provides a much better user interface/experience while still meeting the goals of bug 521905 (and potentially being less annoying to those who use the dev builds)

Reproducible: Always
Blocks: 521905
Status: UNCONFIRMED → NEW
Ever confirmed: true
Version: unspecified → Trunk
Blocks: 461973
Flags: in-testsuite?
Whiteboard: [AddonsRewrite]
Per policy at https://wiki.mozilla.org/Bug_Triage/Projects/Bug_Handling/Bug_Husbandry#Inactive_Bugs. If this bug is not an enhancement request or a bug not present in a supported release of Firefox, then it may be reopened.
Status: NEW → RESOLVED
Closed: 6 years ago
Resolution: --- → INACTIVE
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